Pro-life group wins case over information disclosure

A judge upheld the Information Tribunal’s decision to disclose “sensitive” data from national statistics to the anti-abortion ProLife Alliance.

Lawyers for the Department of Health had argued the decision, made in October 2009, was legally flawed. James Eadie QC, for the DoH, said patients could be identified if the data was put together with other information in the public domain, with “awful” consequences for patients.

But Mr Justice Cranston, sitting at London’s High Court, ruled there had been no error of law and the tribunal had been entitled to conclude the risk of identification was “extremely remote”. It was also entitled to conclude that release of the material to a body like ProLife was “proportionate” and necessary to inform the public debate on the controversial subject of abortion.

The judge, however, put a stay on any of the data being released to give the DoH time to appeal to the Court of Appeal.

The ProLife Alliance (PLA) says it should have full disclosure of data because it is concerned the rules on abortion are being flouted to weed out “less than perfect” babies – including those with a cleft palate or club foot where doctors say such conditions can usually be corrected by surgery.

Abortion on “social” grounds is only legal in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy but “Ground E” of the 1967 Abortion Act makes abortion legal right up to birth if there is a substantial risk of “serious” physical or mental abnormality. Until 2002, statistics released on abortions listed in full the number of late terminations for different foetal abnormalities. The DoH decided in 2003 to suppress the release of figures if the number of late terminations in a category was less than 10 after concerns grew that there was a real risk that women and their doctors in that category could be personally identified because they were so few.

British Pregnancy Advisory Service chief executive Ann Furedi said: “The real issue at stake is not how and when statistics are published, but that the late abortions currently performed for foetal anomaly are lawful and that doctors should be able to carry them out without intimidation.

“They are no one’s ‘dirty little secret’ and the doctors and nursing staff involved deserve admiration and support.”